What is Federated API ? #graphql #api #designpatterns #apidesign #frontenddevelopment #software

What is a Federated API ? Why we use them. GraphQL Federation — Part 1

What is federation ?
The action of consolidating related objects / organizations / APIs into a single entity with centralized control.

What is a federated API ?
Federated API is a design pattern which refers to the practice of combining multiple APIs to build a single new monolith API.

Api-composition-pattern-why-it-is-becoming-an-industry-standard
What is Federation in GraphQL API ?
Combine multiple APIs into a single federated GraphQL API.

Federation serves as an API orchestration layer, where clients make a single GraphQL request and it coordinates multiple API calls to return a unified response.

API orchestration : The process of combining and coordinating multiple APIs. Includes sequencing API calls, transforming data, and managing security requirements.

Why use API Federation?
We discuss all benefits in detail here. In short Federation allows :

Discoverability: Having all capabilities in a single api makes it easy to see what capabilities have been developed and who owns them.
Consistency: A single, governed api will ensure consistent objects that can be seamlessly shared between capabilities.
Enable micro service architecture : Apollo Federation lets API teams operate in a micro services architecture, where each team is resonsible for their smaller api/graph
Efficient and Centralized Orchestration
Promotes Reuse
Unified Interface
Acts as a Middleware Layer: This layer handles authentication, request routing, data transformation, error handling, and other cross-cutting concerns.
Dynamic Federation: In some cases, the composition of APIs might be dynamic, meaning that the federation logic adapts based on runtime conditions or client requests. This could involve selecting different APIs based on availability, performance, or user preferences.

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